Skyrim Cosplay Progress: Savior's Hide

Last weekend, I officially started crafting my new Skyrim cosplay, Savior's Hide armor set. Well, technically it's not a set, it's just a chest piece reward when you complete the quest: Ill met by Moonlight. Ever since I first obtained that armor in game back in 2011, I knew I had to craft this armor. But the question is: How would I go about crafting this costume?

For nearly 20 years now, I have been crafting my own cosplays. There is always a problem to tackle when crafting, whether be what materials to use, how sturdy or flexible it is, will it hold, and of course my personal stance: Does it look realistic? Ever since I laid eyes on this armor set, I desperately wanted to craft it. But really, I knew it was going to be a huge amount of problem solving, and truthfully, I didn't know how I was going to tackle it.

To begin with, I am a huge believer of crafting armor the way it would in game and in real life. What I mean is that since most armor is made of metal, I do not want to craft armor with flexible materials. Metal is made to be hard, so therefore I want to imitate what it's meant to be. Considering Savior's Hide is supposed to be leather mixed with metal, I couldn't envision how I was going to craft this and make it believable. So, for all these years, this costume has been on my 'cosplay wish list' to craft sometime in the future.

Recently I had been playing the new remaster of Oblivion. I took a break from that game and hopped back onto Skyrim. I had been going through my character's wardrobe and getting her ready for my new adventures and came across my favorite armor set: Savior's Hide. This time, as I looked at the 3D model, I did have an idea on how to craft this armor. It would still be extremely difficult for me, and some of it would mean uncharted cosplay territory, but hey, it's at the point that I either craft it now, or I will never craft it as time goes on. So what the heck, I started planning it out, then moved to the pattern phase. Which brings me to last weekend.

I know it doesn't look like much, but this is the workings of my pattern of the chest piece. All of these pieces are foam scraps that I had laying around (hooray for craft hoarding!) I used the above two images as reference, as well as a few of my in-game screenshots, and just went to town. As I mentioned above, I do want the armor to have a stiffness like actual armor, but I had to wrap my head around the idea that the way this costume is designed, it just won't work to be completely realistic. I have to make it somewhat unrealistic if I want to achieve the design of the costume. That being said, some of these foam scraps that are the based will be used for the worbla (a type of thermoplastic.) As for the weird wolf-head on the chest...this is where I had to throw my hands up in the air and say "Okay, this has to be flexible, no matter how unrealistic the armor would be."

This is the part where I go UGH. I know a lot of cosplayers craft all foam costumes. It works for them, but I'm not a fan. But I have to put my own preferences aside and just use foam because nothing else will really come close to getting what I need to achieve. So this weekend, I bought some foam clay and did some work. Mind you, this is the beginning of the piece. I will be sanding this down and adding more detail. The plan is I will attach this section to a harder piece of chest armor to make it more sturdy when I attach fur and rivets. As for the clay, it was hard to work with. It was hard to get it smooth after it was laid down, and heaven forbid if I put any other bit of clay on it. Though it takes 24-48 hours to dry, I could already feel its surface drying after 10 mins! I had to work fast before it started to coagulate.

Another thing I did was went through all my casted resin gems that hadn't been painted yet. I found three perfect resin gems that will be used for a circlet (in the first picture above.) I will get the colors to match the stone in my Amulet of Mara necklace (see above photo.) Yes! Lucky me! I had crafted an Amulet of Mara for another Skyrim cosplay many years ago. It has to be modified for this costume, that's why it's all wonky on the mannequin. Anywho, that's about it for this post. The plan is that I will try and get some progress done every weekend, unless I am out of town that weekend. For those of you who are wondering if I am writing, yes I am! I am making good progress of my fourth book. More to come on that! Until next time! -Beth #skyrim #skyrimcosplay #saviorshide #hide #armor #skyrimarmor #barbarian #viking #norsemythology